Archive for May, 2015

“Warning!!! Dragon Con 2015 is fast approaching! Collision imminent in less than 100 days! Learn how to protect yourself from con disaster from the ESO crew. Mike and Mike get the latest news from Director of Media Relations, Dan Carroll​. Darren Nowell uncovers some spots of solace away from the madding crowds. Kevin Batchelder provides pointers on dealing with the mass in transit. Michelle Biddix-Simmons checks systems and equipment. Eternal Zan offers some hotel transfer training, and Bewitched Raven reports on the status of her costumes. Hold on tight as we round the corner and enter the final stretch!”

Yeah, that sounds like a weird as hell header, but that was more or less my first thought when I heard the story of Madam Satan being discussed. I thought it sounded like The Piña Colada Song, and I wasn’t alone in that thought. My introduction to the film was almost exactly one year ago in the form of one of Bill Mulligan’s contributions to a Con Carolinas panel on overlooked/forgotten films. About half of the audience said the same thing about the plot that I did.

It also got a lot of people curious as to how much of the description of what had to be a drug fantasy version of the film rather than an actual film was real versus how much of it was hyperbole. No one in the audience had ever heard of the film before, and, if memory serves, no other panelist had either. It turned out that it was a real film, and he only got one detail about the very end of the film wrong. Everything else, though? He was totally spot on.

As I explained here in the first blog piece that I wrote about this topic, this partly grew out of my noticing that a lot of people who were craving shows (although usually with the idea of AM/FM radio shows) that catered to geek interests were often the ones who were completely unaware that there were a lot of very good shows out there in the form of podcasts. Not only are they good, but some are every bit as polished and professional as what you might expect from something on over the airwaves radio. Yeah, some are nothing more than guys sitting around a table chatting, and there’s nothing wrong with that when the chat is entertaining and informative, but some of them have all the bells and whistles that one might find with a “professional” show on the airwaves.

It also partly grew out of my attitude of what being a geek is. If you find something you like, if you find something you enjoy, tell others about it and spread the word. So that’s what I’m doing. However, before starting on a new batch of shows, I actually want to look at a couple of things going on with some I touched on in the first post on the topic.

One of the great goofy films that will likely never see a proper release on home video at this point. A shame too since it has a lot of fun with some of the so-bad-they’re-good films of yesteryear. My look at it over on Needless Things.

I have no problem with grim and gritty in my storytelling. If anything, I quite like a number of grim and gritty stories and characters that are out there. As a general rule, I have no more problem with the grim and gritty storytelling tone, style, and tropes than I have with any other storytelling’s tone, style, or tropes. There are only three circumstances that arise that find me having an issue with grim and gritty.

1)I have an issue when creators using it don’t understand that it’s not a substitute for a good story or, in some extreme cases, a substitute for an actual story.

2)I have an issue with it when it’s used where it’s not needed to be used or used inappropriately for the characters being written at the time.

3) I have an issue with it when fans and creators alike promote the style while confusing the concept of grim and gritty with the concepts of both adult and sophisticated storytelling while insisting that the one is somehow automatically the other two.